Room XIII. Bonifacio Falcioni Collection
Room XIII. Bonifacio Falcioni Collection
The frieze, the work of Daniele da Volterra and his pupils, forms part of the decoration from the time of Julius III (1550-55).
This small room houses the main nucleus of the archaeological collection amassed, in the second half of the nineteenth century, by Bonifacio Falcioni of Viterbo and acquired for the Vatican Museums by Leo XIII (1878-1903) in May 1898.
The display cases contain a cross-section of a typical nineteenth-century private collection, in which archaeological artefacts were gathered together without particular criteria for sorting or selection, heterogeneous in terms of nature, chronology and provenance. There are clay vases from the proto-Villanovan age and the early Iron age, alongside works in bucchero, Attic and Etruscan painted ceramics, bronzes (vases, votive statuettes, objects linked to clothing, daily life and horse-riding) and, in particular, jewellery of various ages, which constitute the most valuable element of the collection.